51. Distance

I meet Tellerhorn’s confused look and offer him my hand. His
grip is dirty and tired, but still firm.

“I didn’t expect you to be so good with a sword,” I tell
him. “Thanks for having my back.”

“A gentleman’s duty,” he replies, quietly. “I’m master at
the university fencing club going on a decade, but it’s been almost twenty
years since I had to swing a blade to bloody purpose. I’d rather not have to
again. But war is coming, Mark. We’re not the only ones who know about this. If
there are more of those diamonds, then this isn’t over.”

“Hey Drydus,” I call, “are there more dreaming diamonds?”

The German rumbles for a moment. “Ve don’t know. Once yes.
Now? Maybe.”

I show Tellerhorn a shrug, but I lean close to say quietly:
“If you find trouble and need me to watch your back, I’ll do what I can. But, Doctor,
if anybody decides we need to be studied in a lab, they’ll live a lot longer if
they never find us.”

His grip tightens for a moment and the candlelight makes his
glasses opaque. Then he lets go and I turn to where the sisters wait in the
shadows.

We limp down winding alleys, smelling that earth and wind
scent of a storm that’s passed.

The clouds part in fits and the stars burn bright and clear
in the gaps. The birds and bugs are silent, but here and there monkeys crawl
along wall-tops, or something rustles in the reeds.

Nai died. Lots of people died. But Nai did too. He knew he
would if he tried to help – he said as much. In the end he went anyway. I
suppose sitting still in Bangkok on a night like tonight, with nothing to do
but wait and hope, wasn’t in his nature. He had to do something and there was
only one thing to do. I know the feeling, and I wish I’d been there to see it.
The ground presses wet and real beneath my bare feet, though it should be
shaking and falling apart with all the death this night’s seen. A faint pain
edges its way into my muscles, past whatever barrier Sylvia erected, but that
barrier doesn’t hold back the dizzy weirdness of walking past a tiny house
decked with garlands – presumably a home to the recently married. Some of the
flowers have been blown from their nails and float in the mud puddles that line
the alley bottom.

This thing I feel is written on Sylvia’s face like
weathering on a mountain, but when Jenny reaches for her arm, she pulls away.
So we walk in silence, savoring the smells and the stars, our weary muscles,
and the warm breeze that whispers in shadowed streets.

The police are out in force. Army men stand at every corner,
but they never seem to be looking our way when Sylvia leads us across a street.

She takes us down the hill of the city, through winding
alleys that drift with smoke, mist, and the sulfurous caramel smell of
kingfruit. We glide on tired legs past homes of stone and painted signs made
purple by the dark. Then the smell of fish and algae tells me we’re near the
river. We round a corner on a dirt track lined with wooden huts and the Cho
Phraya makes a black wall before us.

A dock reaches out into that murky face like a bridge over a
deep gulf. At its side, a little boathouse crouches, dilapidated and empty.
Sylvia doesn’t pause but starts out the wooden dock, even though no boats wait
there.

A sense of creeping familiarly steals over me as her feet
make the wooden planks moan. Jenny follows one pace ahead of me, watching her
sister’s back, but her shoulders are knotted with confusion.

Sylvia’s bent hands worm over the water and I feel more than
see power building in the air. The world shifts, like it did in Ayutthaya, a
teeming landscape of memory flows in the river’s face, and the sky begins to
spin.

As I walk, the waters of the Cho Phraya tilt up around us,
rippling and endless.

I smell garbage and gasoline.

A cold wind hits my face, and ahead of Jenny, Sylvia reaches
the wharf’s end and turns back. Jenny follows her, and when she looks past my
shoulder, her breath catches.

When I turn back, the dock is ten times as long, five times
as wide, and the boathouse shed has become the dilapidated shape of Warehouse
43.

Where there was a
dark city of rolling hills, crouching beneath its cloak of shadow, green leaves
and the light of the stars, now spread the distant lights of industrial
Chicago, gleaming against an overcast sky. The rumble of that industry is
endless, alien, and welcoming.

Chill Chicago wind cuts through my coat, goosbumping my
dirty skin. I hug the wet cloth closer, grateful to the British Army for having
good taste in coats. Something heavy in one pocket bumps my chest. Jenny
clutches her elbows and shivers. As I step up to her she purposefully pushes
her back against me.

“Your jaw hit your knees,” I tell her.

“So’d yours.”

“No,” I say. “Nothing surprises me now. Not where your
sister’s concerned. We knew they weren’t on the barge David caught, we just
didn’t know how they were getting across the pond so fast.”

“David was never going to figure it out,” she says. “Not
ever.”

Sylvia pauses, silhouetted by the faint yellow light from
the single bulb at the warehouse’s front. She turns back to us, a thin shadow
in her dark coat, her eyes blue and luminous against the towering Chicago
night.

“Goodbye Maya,” she whispers. “Thank you.”

In answer the wind lilts, and the whistle over the city almost
seems to laugh.

There’s still a blood stain in the street – an ink blot
shaped like an ocean wave rolling back. I was holding something then. Jenny’s
gun. The bullet shells are gone from where I left them.

“This is where you died?” Jenny says and her fingers pinch
my coat-sleeve.

I nod and clear my throat.

The steel mill on the horizon groans and rumbles. A black
cat perches on the hood of a rusted out Model-T across the street, watching
through eyes that catch the yellow light.

My Model-T. That’s my Wandering T, right where I left it. It
wasn’t stolen? It wasn’t stolen!

I can feel the exhaustion behind my sluggish thoughts. Holy
hell, I’m going to sleep in my own bed.

“The note.” Sylvia’s voice carries a pinch of satisfaction,
like those words scratched a long-standing itch. She waits a couple of yards
from us, watching. The light behind makes her glow, but leaves her eyes in
shadow. “You found Boonrit’s note. He had no tongue. He wrote a note. It sent
you here.”

“I told you about the note,” I say, frowning. “Right here. I
said that. The tongueless guy had a note, that’s why I came here. That’s what I
said.”

She frowns, stares, and then takes a steadying breath.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“I’m not sure which part was your fault, but I appreciate
the apology.”

Jenny’s eyes dart back and forth between us. “What are we
talking about?”

“My death,” I say. “She could have stopped Hilda before he
shot me.”

“No,” says Sylvia. “I shot you.”

“I thought that was Hilda.”

Sylvia shakes her head. Her blue eyes burn.

I shrug. “It doesn’t matter.”

She takes a step toward Jenny and I but stops at the edge of
the bloodstain. Her words come slowly as if each one needs to be first measured
and cut: “I have been trying to understand. Why did you follow that note?”

Jenny’s eyebrows twitch at the question. She turns to me,
close enough her body heat penetrates the coat fabric. The blizzard in her eyes
sends a shiver down my spine.

I say: “You don’t either of you know?”

“I followed you,” Jenny replies. “I thought you knew Sylvia
and I figured something had gone wrong. I thought if I could follow you I might
find her. But you didn’t know her. I never got a not-screwy answer out of you about
it. I guess I gave up questioning it.”

She takes a step back, leaving me to stare at the ocean
stain for a moment longer.

I clear my throat. “I needed a walk.”

“No,” says Jenny, looking back and forth between Sylvia and
I with eyes as wide as full moons. “I want an actual answer from you now. Now
is when you give me an actual answer. Why did you chase Sylvia into trouble?”

Sylvia watches with her eyes in shadow and her hands hanging
at her sides. She tilts her head when I look at her, but makes no other move.

The factory drops something that sends a boom rumbling
across the landscape. There’s no party in the Hooverville alleys. There’s
usually a party. The freezing wind makes my bare legs goosbump.

“I was looking for a way to die,” I say. “Stepping in front
of the EL seemed too mundane. Getting knifed in a back alley seemed too meaningless.
Drinking myself out, too risky.”

“Risky?” says Jenny, “How could… I mean. How could a way
of killing yourself be too risky?”

Sylvia says: “You found one.”

“Yeah,” I reply, and watch Jenny’s eyes narrow. “But I got a
two for one deal; I also found a reason to live. What I don’t understand, is
why you gave me that drug. Why’d you shoot me up with heros?”

Sylvia’s eyes turn down. “Agafya was coming. I did not want
him to have it. It had to go somewhere. You or Hilda? I did not know what it
would do: I thought madness or a curse. Hilda was my friend.”

Jenny grins: “Mark was your rubbish bin? Sounds about
right.”

“Yeah yeah,” I say, scratching my neck. “I appreciate the
honesty.” I poke Jenny. “So what about you? You shot Nash right over there. You
might have guessed either of us was a friend or a foe of Sylvia’s, but you
chose to save me.”

“I don’t know,” Jenny answers. “I’ve gone over it a hundred
times in my head but I don’t know why. It was the first time I ever shot
somebody, and I did it because… because I was just convinced that you were
going to lead me to Sylvia and I needed in that moment to protect you. I mean,
I guess I was right but… I’m really glad I was right.”

“Just think, if you’d shot the other guy you could have had
this whole adventure with Nash by your side. He seemed like a born sidekick.
More of a resume too.”

Jenny sighs. The steelworks grumbles. A crow passes overhead
to land on the eve of the warehouse. Jenny steps across the bloodstain to wrap
her arms around me. The touch is like land underfoot after a night adrift at
sea. I’m afraid to break her, but all I want to do is hold on.

Sylvia watches us through glowing blue eyes, her head tilted
slightly to one side.

This time the grumble comes from Jenny. She wrinkles her nose “You really stink.”

One Reply to “51. Distance”

Sorry for being late! I thought this chapter was really cute. These events have forged them into this hyperdysfunctional family unit. And they’ve all saved each other in different ways and for complicated reasons, intentionally or not. It will be interesting to go back over the first few chapters of this with the knowledge of Mark’s intentions as described here.